Born January 16, 1913 in Montreal, Canada; Cirlin's family moved to
Detroit when he was young, and he attended Cass Technical High School
there. After graduation, he studied at a Detroit art school for a year,
on a scholarship. Following a period of travel back and forth between
Detroit and Florida, he took night classes under George Salter at the
Cooper Union for Advancement of Science and Art, and graduated around
1942.

Cirlin began his career in commercial art as a freelance sign painter,
working both at his Greenwich Village house and a studio in East 35th
Street which he shared with Lester Kohs. In 1945 and 1946 his circle
of friends included Salter, Kohs, Riki Levinsn,
Philip Grushkin, Rafael Palacios, George Hornby
and Gobin Stair.

Stair was art director at Bantam Books
at this time, and some of the others worked on cover illustrations for
Bantam and Penguin Books. Cirlin's first paperback
assignment was to do a cover for Bantam 5, Scaramouche. Although he
had the ability to draw quite well, he was then using a rather clumsy
drawing style which he had picked up from George Salter.

According to designer and publisher Hornby:"He was the best calligrapher
in America, but you never knew if he could deliver on time. I often
had to go around there at six in the morning, practically with a pistol
pointed at his head, to get him finish things for me."

Rafael Palacios remembers:"One time, Cirlin had to do a cover
for a Simon & Schuster book called Ceasar and Christ. He
lettered the title beautifully, in lovely big Roman capitals, in three
lines over the entire cover:Ceasar - and - Christ. Then he had
to sign it, and he put his name very small in the middle of the cover,
so it read: Ceasar - Cirlin - and - Christ! And then there's
the story about why he never had to go into the army during the war:
when he was called up and they asked him what he did for a living, he
said he made jackets; they thought he meant work jackets and, since
the manufacture of workclothing was considered essential, they didn't
induct him!"

Cirlin taught at Cooper Union until about 1950. In 1953 he moved out
to the Los Angeles area; he was the art director for UCLA for a time,
did graphic work for motorcycle and aviation magazines, designed a series
of albums for the Audio Books Company and worked on "Designer
and the Printing Press", a series outlining the history of
typography.